The Kuantan Criminal

Back in the early 20th Century, we had a menace by the name of Loi Tack (also spelt as Loi Teck). Come the 21st Century, we have Wong Tack. The times may differ but both were and are advocates of criminal force.

Rocky Bru picked up an article of Wong Tack’s criminal threat in a recent Guang Ming Daily’s Sunday Night Edition. Wong Tack was reported to have uttered the following in the event that the Lynas Rare Earth Plant is not closed after the next general election:

“I will personally burn down the rare earth plant!”

If this is not criminal intimidation as stipulated in Section 503 of the Malaysian Penal Code, then I do not know what is.

Such a huge sentence for someone so small. I doubt Wong Tack would utter such threat if he knows he does not have the backing. He has personally stated that his Himpunan Hijau group would support Anwar Ibrahim in the upcoming general election because “…Anwar Ibrahim has promised the rakyat that when they come into power, the rare earth plant and Bukit Koman cyanide gold mine project will be closed.”

Wong Tack reminded that Himpunan Hijau had gotten as far as the Lynas plant’s gates on 31st December 2012, therefore the next step would be “to gate-crash and burn the plant.” Although Himpunan Hijau does not plan for anymore demonstration, Wong Tack stressed tat the group would be helping the Pakatan Rakyat to topple the Barisan Nasional government.

It does not take an engineer to know that when you destroy a plant, you are more likely also to damage or destroy the controls that are already in place to protect the surrounding community as well as environment. To this, Wong Tack said:

“…the action of burning down the plant will not harm anyone because the objective is to stop the rare earth plant from causing harm on people’s health and life.”

When a UN body had reported that Lynas meets all prerequisites to commence safe operations, you get this whiner going around telling people that it is not safe. I hope he knows that half of the daily radiation dosage he receives is from his own home. In fact, after the Three-Mile Island nuclear accident, radioactive iodine was detected at 20 picocuries per liter.

And what is that in layman terms? 355 mL of the slightly radioactive milk above would give you only 1/75 BED….or BANANA EQUIVALENT DOSE. Yes, bananas are more radioactive.

So, for Wong Tack to create unnecessary public alarm and for him to make criminal intimidation shows the desperate nature of politics in Kuantan. Perhaps, someone who backs him up is asking him to do all this. Or even perhaps Wong Tack sees this as a personal economic raison d’être. By any way and means, his logic of burning down the plant yet not harm the surrounding community and environment is childish, but very malicious.

I hope, by his logic, he burns his house down with his children inside to kill the mosquitoes that bug him in his sleep.